Victory - A novel by Joseph Conrad

A "Bonnard to Vuillard" Exhibit

George Hendrik Breitner, Girl in Red Kimono, Geesje Kwak, 1893–95. Noortman Master Paintings, Amsterdam, on behalf of private collection, Netherlands

Snapshot: Painters and Photography, Bonnard to Vuillard
(February 4–May 6, 2012 - Phillips' Collection, Washington D.C.)

The invention of the Kodak handheld camera in 1888 energized the working methods and creative vision of many post-impressionists. Several of the leading painters and printmakers of the day used photography to record their public spheres and private lives, producing surprising, inventive results. Combining over 200 photographs with approximately 70 paintings, prints, and drawings from renowned international collections, Snapshot: Painters and Photography, Bonnard to Vuillard focuses on the dynamic relationship among the artists’ work in various media. The exhibition features experiments made with the camera by seven figures. Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Edouard Vuillard, and Félix Vallotton were leading members of the Nabis, a group of French avant-garde artists who sought a new kind of painting inspired by Paul Gauguin. George Hendrik Breitner, Henri Evenepoel, and Henri Rivière responded with equal enthusiasm to the possibilities inherent in the new medium. Snapshot is the largest selection ever assembled of photographs by these post-impressionists.

The artists recorded everything from bustling street scenes and the building of the Eiffel Tower to nude models and family trips to the countryside. Although they collectively produced over 10,000 photographs, most of the photographs in the exhibition are unknown and previously unpublished, and none of the artists thought of themselves as photographers. These were private objects, often made for the same reason people use cameras to this day: to commemorate events or capture precious moments with friends or loved ones. The artists sometimes translated their photographic images directly into their work in other media, and when viewed alongside these paintings, prints, and drawings, the snapshots reveal fascinating parallels in foreshortening, cropping, lighting, silhouettes, and vantage point.

"Golden Verses" by Gerard de Nerval

Do you believe that you alone can think...
Free-thinking man?

In this world,where life bursts forth in everything?
In your power you dispose the forces at your command
But the universe is far from all your plans.

Honor in each creature an active spirit,
Each flower is a soul blossoming in Nature;

In metal there dwells a mystery of love:

“Everything is sentient!”
And everything has power upon you!

Beware of the blind wall with watchful eyes:
Even matter itself is imbued with a word.
Do not therefore put matter to impious use.

Often within the most obscure being there lives a hidden god,
and like a nascent pair of eyes veiled by its lids,
a pure spirit grows beneath the husk of stones.

Kafka's Saddest Paragraph

 That most unfortunate Hunter Gracchus - drifting invisibly through time, eternally stranded between this world and the next -  no one knows about him, no one thinks about him, no one will seek him out, no one will find him or hear of him or be able to offer him help or commiserate with his plight...It's quite a symbol that Kafka invokes for us, and it makes me wonder about the type of isolation he was really referring to. It's enough to make deep-thinkers seek out more mundane distractions to lose themselves in...

"...Nobody will read what I say here, no one will come to help me; even if all the people were commanded to help me, every door and window would remain shut, everybody would take to bed and draw the bedclothes over his head the whole earth would become an inn for the night. And there is sense in that, for nobody knows of me, and if anyone knew he would not know where I could be found, and if he knew where I could be found, he would not know how to deal with me, he would not know how to help me. The thought of helping me is an illness that has to be cured by taking to one's bed. I know that, and so I do not shout to summon help, even though at moments - when I lose control over myself, as I have done just now, for instance - I think seriously of it. But to drive out such thoughts I need only look round me and verify where I am, and- I can safely assert- have been for hundreds of years." - from "The Hunter Gracchus"

Newman on "Higher" Education

The following is John Henry Newman's famous description of one* of the major pitfalls of so-called "higher" education" these days, namely, people with "views" and "opinions" on every topic, who the august Newman explains are in fact somewhat discursive in their thinking - even scatter-brained. Such scholarly dilettantes have been trained to dabble in various subjects with the result that they know precious little about almost everything.  They collect data and information as they go and are capable of reciting many facts and snippets of current events, but lack the power to process the empirical data. It scares me to think how much of the following critique applies to me and this somewhat discursive blog of mine, but I do believe Mr. N. has an excellent point to make about our present-day world with its relentless 24/7 news-cycle, where instantaneous "views" are demanded from us on subjects for which we have had precious little time to reflect.  Postscript: The other* serious pitfall of education that Newman mentions is that of narrow specialization - i.e. immersing oneself in a single area of study and fallaciously using that as the benchmark by which to judge other areas of knowledge.

"In like manner, we sometimes fall in with persons who have seen much of the world, and of the men who, in their day, have played a conspicuous part in it, but who generalize nothing, and have no observation, in the true sense of the word. They abound in information in detail, curious and entertaining, about men and things; and, having lived under the influence of no very clear or settled principles, religious or political, they speak of every one and every thing, only as so many phenomena, which are complete in themselves, and lead to nothing, not discussing them, or teaching any truth, or instructing the hearer, but simply talking. No one would say that these persons, well informed as they are, had attained to any great culture of intellect or to philosophy.

The case is the same still more strikingly where the persons in question are beyond dispute men of inferior powers and deficient education. Perhaps they have been much in foreign countries, and they receive, in a passive, otiose, unfruitful way, the various facts which are forced upon them there. Seafaring men, for example, range from one end of the earth to the other; but the multiplicity of external objects, which they have encountered, forms no symmetrical and consistent picture upon their imagination; they see the tapestry of human life, as it were on the wrong side, and it tells no story. They sleep, and they rise up, and they find themselves, now in Europe, now in Asia; they see visions of great cities and wild regions; they are in the marts of commerce, or amid the islands of the South; they gaze on Pompey's Pillar, or on the Andes; and nothing which meets them carries them forward or backward, to any idea beyond itself. Nothing has a drift or relation; nothing has a history or a promise. Every thing stands by itself, and comes and goes in its turn, like the shifting scenes of a show, which leave the spectator where he was. Perhaps you are near such a man on a particular occasion, and expect him to be shocked or perplexed at something which occurs; but one thing is much the same to him as another, or, if he is perplexed, it is as not knowing what to say, whether it is right to admire, or to ridicule, or to disapprove, while conscious that some expression of opinion is expected from him; for in fact he has no standard of judgment at all, and no landmarks to guide him to a conclusion. Such is mere acquisition, and, I repeat, no one would dream of calling it philosophy.

Instances, such as these, confirm, by the contrast, the conclusion I have already drawn from those which preceded them. That only is true enlargement of mind which is the power of viewing many things at once as one whole, of referring them severally to their true place in the universal system, of understanding their respective values, and determining their mutual dependence. Thus is that form of Universal Knowledge, of which I have on a former occasion spoken, set up in the individual intellect, and constitutes its perfection. Possessed of this real illumination, the mind never views any part of the extended subject-matter of Knowledge without recollecting that it is but a part, or without the associations which spring from this recollection. It makes every thing in some sort lead to every thing else; it would communicate the image of the whole to every separate portion, till that whole becomes in imagination like a spirit, every where pervading and penetrating its component parts, and giving them one definite meaning. Just as our bodily organs, when mentioned, recall their function in the body, as the word "creation" suggests the Creator, and "subjects" a sovereign, so, in the mind of the Philosopher, as we are abstractedly conceiving of him, the elements of the physical and moral world, sciences, arts, pursuits, ranks, offices, events, opinions, individualities, are all viewed as one, with correlative functions, and as gradually by successive combinations converging, one and all, to the true centre.

To have even a portion of this illuminative reason and true philosophy is the highest state to which nature can aspire, in the way of intellect; it puts the mind above the influences of chance and necessity, above anxiety, suspense, unsettlement, and superstition, which is the lot of the many. Men, whose minds are possessed with some one object, take exaggerated views of its importance, are feverish in the pursuit of it, make it the measure of things which are utterly foreign to it, and are startled and despond if it happens to fail them. They are ever in alarm or in transport. Those on the other hand who have no object or principle whatever to hold by, lose their way, every step they take. They are thrown out, and do not know what to think or say, at every fresh juncture; they have no view of persons, or occurrences, or facts, which come suddenly upon them, and they hang upon the opinion of others, for want of internal resources. But the intellect, which has been disciplined to the perfection of its powers, which knows, and thinks while it knows, which has learned to leaven the dense mass of facts and events with the elastic force of reason, such an intellect cannot be partial, cannot be exclusive, cannot be impetuous, cannot be at a loss, cannot but be patient, collected, and majestically calm, because it discerns the end in every beginning, the origin in every end, the law in every interruption, the limit in each delay; because it ever knows where it stands, and how its path lies from one point to another." - from The Idea of a University by John Henry Newman

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Calling All Introverts: Hey...Uhm...Let's...Unite...Yeah

Hello. I'm really glad you could make it to this little blog post of mine - for the type of gathering that we introverts can really appreciate without feeling "drained" or "depleted." Uhm...I just want to say that if you do consider yourself one of us and you are dealing with certain stress points throughout your day - such as the burden of mingling and making "small talk," or navigating your way through crowds, back-slapping and hand-grabbing, offering painted smiles to one's fellow actors, or having to attend another "meeting" or "party" or getting uncomfortable while people-you-don't-really-know and don't want to know decide to "unwind" and "open up" in front of you,  or keeping your "game face" on for people in authority,  not to mention having to explain "one more time" to someone who "just doesn't understand" that you're really not in a bad mood or trying to be mean, that what you really need right now is just a little space to "catch your breath" and "re-charge your battery" ... be aware that the rest of us are dealing with the VERY SAME ISSUES and are having a hard time of it. The good news is that we do understand what you're going through and we affirm your amazing talent and creativity in various areas which are only now (perhaps) beginning to emerge. We hope you have a wonderful day - and keep fighting the good non-violent fight until such time as the forthcoming REVOLUTION shall break out and go public, however gently, however mildly, if not too-too gradually, and we shall at last garner our fair share of well-deserved "acclaim" and "respect" from members of the otherwise recalcitrant, incorrigible "extrovert majority."